Supreme Court To Hear Five Petitions Challenging ECI’s SIR In Bihar On July 10

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to an urgent hearing of batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s June 24, 2025 order for a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar just months before the state goes to assembly polls. 

The petitions, filed by TMC MP Mahua Moitra, former AAP co-founder Yogendra Yadav, Manoj RJD MP Manoj Jha, Association for Democratic Reforms among others, were mentioned for early hearing before a Bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi. The court agreed to the demands of a battery of lawyers representing various petitioners including Senior Advocates AM Singhvi, Kapil Sibal, and Gopal Sankaranarayanan. 

The petitions are against the Election Commission of India’s June 24 order for a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Bihar electoral rolls just months ahead of the state’s assembly election in November, this year. 

Yadav and Moitra had on Sunday filed their writs separately before the Supreme Court. They had asked for the apex bench to set aside India’s Election Commission (ECI)’s controversial order to revise Bihar’s electoral rolls just ahead of the state’s assembly elections in November 2025. Moitra’s writ was the second plea filed before the apex court in as many days; Yadav and Jha filed their petitions later on the same day.

In her writ, Moitra said the Bihar SIR “disproportionately affects economically and socially vulnerable communities and resemble the structure and consequences of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which has been widely critiqued.”

On Saturday, July 5, Association for Democratic Reforms, an NGO headed by Prashant Bhushan. In ADR’s writ, the petition said the SIR violated the “right to vote of lakhs of voters.”

During the hearing, Singhvi told the bench that the SIR imposes unrealistic and stringent deadlines on Bihar’s poor and marginalised voters to produce documents beyond the Aadhaar and ration card to prove their citizenship. Sibal insisted that the court issue notice to the ECI and question the polling agency’s decision to conduct the SIR that “risks” disenfranchising voters in Bihar just as the state prepares for its state elections.

The ECI said that Bihar was just the first state; it said the plan is to conduct a SIR exercise across the whole country, adding that schedules for this exercise will be issued separately.  

The Opposition INDIA bloc had earlier said it was exploring legal options to challenge the ECI’s order for a SIR. Opposition leaders have called out the SIR’s timing as a subversive method to disenfranchise entire sections of the Bihar electorate ahead of the state elections in a manner that will favour the ruling alliance.  The ECI confirmed that the revision could weed out 20 per cent of the State’s population, who migrate for work.